Book of Titus - Ch. 3, vv. 2-3

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All righty here, let's see, where do I want to pick up? Last week we began

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Titus chapter 3 and pretty much covered verse 1, and even

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I think, if I'm remembering correctly, he just briefly touched on verse 2, so that's probably where we'll pick up today.

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And I'll read the first two verses just to get us started, because it is one thought, one continual sentence by the

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Apostle Paul here. So in Titus chapter 3, starting at verse 1, it says, So again, we covered verse 1 pretty thoroughly last week, and we'll finish verse 2 here just a second and flow into verse 3, but just a couple of reminders is the way that first verse begins, put them in mind, that is another way of just saying, remind them.

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This is something that they've heard before, and they need to be reminded of it again. Now what's amazing about the

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Bible is, we touched on this briefly last week, but it is written to a specific audience in a specific cultural historical context.

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In this case, we're talking about the very pagan island of Crete, and yet the Holy Spirit, being

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God Himself, can write the Bible in such a way as to be directly applicable to those people at that time.

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Remember, this is basically a personal letter that Titus is receiving from Paul, but at the same time, it's written in such a way that it is additionally applicable throughout the rest of time.

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And so we see what Paul is doing here. He is telling Titus to remind the

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Cretans to be subject, to be obedient to their government, to their authorities, because this was apparently something they had issue with.

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They had issue doing, and go figure, they live in a pagan society, there's no, everything is upside down, any sort of moral reference point they have is probably a subjective one, and so, you know, culture can just change on a dime, and people are following their own lusts and pleasures and things like that.

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Well, when you have that form of rebellious spirit, which we're going to be talking about more briefly when we get to verse 3, when you have that, it's really tough to be obedient to your authorities in the way that God wants you to be.

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So, Paul is reminding Titus to remind his people, as Christians, yes, you were pagan, now you are saved, you're still living in the same society though, and you still have your old proclivities, you have sin habits that will stick with you for a while as the sanctification process unfolds.

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Because of this, remind them, Titus, remind them to be subject or to be submissive to their authorities, to their rulers, to obey, to be ready for every good work, and I believe that's a reference to just being a good citizen, being a productive, contributing citizen.

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Obviously, good works fill into everything in the Christian life. And then, he gets to verse 2, so let's take a look at this together.

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And, I'll say this one last thought as we read verse 2, and I think I said this last week, but when

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Paul is setting the tone here in verse 1, he's not saying that we have to be okay with just anything that the government does.

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We talked about that quite a bit last week. We don't have to just sit back and accept anything the government does without condemning it ourselves as Christians on the basis of biblical truth.

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But what Paul is saying is that when we do that, when the government comes out and starts trying to legislate sin, which they do quite often, in other words, through their legislation they make sin okay and approved by the government and things of that sort, and perhaps they're funding other just egregious things.

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We, on the basis of biblical truth, can stand up and fight back, but the question is how.

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And what Paul is about to tell us in verse 2 is that the way we do it, one of the ways in which we do it,

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I would say the normative way, the way in general that we should do it is to do so without being just contentious, rough and tumbling mobsters wanting to go around picking every fight we could possibly find.

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Look at verse 2 with me. Right after telling us to be obedient, to be submissive to our authorities, he says to speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, showing all meekness unto all men.

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So let's break down a couple of these things here. The first one, the first opening phrase of verse 2, to speak evil of no man, it's a single

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Greek word, that entire little phrase there is a single Greek word, and it's the

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Greek term blasphemao. Now this is important because right now we live in what you might call a very empathy -driven environment, a very empathy -driven culture, society, and many people would love to look at this particular verse, the opening phrase especially of Titus 3 .2,

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they would love to look at that, kind of jump on it a little bit as a proof that you just need to be compassionate toward every person regardless of what their proclivities are and speak no evil of no one.

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You can see how someone might grasp onto that and then all of a sudden go out and start affirming everybody's sin and saying you're okay just the way you are and I'm never going to speak evil of anybody because we're told that we just can't do that.

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But again, this is why it's so important to look at what is the term that Paul actually said, what's the term that he actually wrote, what is

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Paul's intent here, not what can we shoehorn into it so that we can justify or rationalize our behavior out in society, but what did

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Paul say, what did he mean? Well, what Paul is doing here is he's telling us to, when we are out there fighting these fights, fighting the culture war so to speak, out there proclaiming truth when evil abounds, what he's saying is that when we're out there doing that, we shouldn't ever stoop to the level of blasphemy while we do it.

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That's the Greek term, blasphemeo, he says we shouldn't stoop down to the level of blasphemy or cursing or contempt toward the people or slander toward the person in the conversation.

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And by the way, the Greek term blasphemeo, yes it's where we get the term blasphemy from, but really what it's root meaning is is to be a slanderous person.

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Well, go figure. Of course Christians aren't supposed to be slanderers, even if we are talking to our enemies here, those that are in direct opposition to God's word out in the culture, whether that be our civil leaders or our fellow citizens or whomever they may be.

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Even when we are up against them proclaiming God's truth saying, look, this actually isn't okay because here is the objective moral standard that condemns what you are saying is okay, we should be able to do that without slandering the person.

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You get it? That's what Paul is saying here. He's not saying that we have to retreat back and just never say anything mean ever or anything that might hurt someone's feelings.

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He's saying don't be blasphemous about it. Don't be slanderous about it. When we proclaim truth, do so in what we're about to look at in a gentle and meek way.

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But it's still truth. It's still forceful. It's still authoritative intrinsically because that's what it is.

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It's truth. It doesn't mean that we're not to address legitimate sin issues when he says speak evil of no man.

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It doesn't mean that we're not to do that with truth when it's necessary. Sometimes it's necessary.

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Sometimes things will be going all right. And that's of course the ideal. We hope and pray for times like that. But there will be other times when it is necessary to address legitimate sin issues.

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Let me give you just a few examples. Elijah, when he was mocking the worshippers of Baal, and sometimes they were his own people.

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When Paul says speak evil of no man, does he mean just sit back and let anyone do whatever they want all the time?

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Well, Elijah certainly didn't. When he saw his own people worshiping the false god, he mocked them.

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And he mocked them on the basis of how ridiculous it was that they were doing what they were doing.

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He's saying you're putting your very eternal souls in harm's way because you are worshiping this false, dumb idol when you know who the true

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God of the universe is. So he approached them with a mocking tone. Even Jeremiah often condemned

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Israel's leaders for what they were doing wrong when they were legislating in sin rather than according to God's law.

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He would condemn them. Isaiah often prophesied against idolaters.

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And again, we're talking about his own people. Again, they weren't shying away from speaking the hard truths when they needed to.

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The question is how did they do it? And of course, you get to the New Testament. And you see

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Jesus's interactions with the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And you have an absolute masterclass of rebuke, rebuttal, admonishing, condemning when it's appropriate.

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Matthew 23 is, of course, the go -to place for this. You see it in all the Gospels in different spots. He was constantly just handing it to the

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Pharisees and the Sadducees, the false leaders of that day. But Matthew 23, just read it sometime all the way through and just pay attention to the tone with which

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Jesus is approaching these false teachers. How is he doing it? What does his polemic look like? What are the rhetorical tools that he's utilizing to show them in that moment and then the rest of the world for the next 2 ,000 years how you should approach evil when it manifests as false teaching?

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And then, of course, you have Paul rebuking false teachers sharply with very biting rhetoric in Galatians, of course, is the preeminent example of that, but in other places too.

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And then Paul would go and rebuke Peter if he needed to as well. So I say all this just to simply point out when

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Paul tells us in this verse, speak evil of no man, he's not saying that we should retreat back and just be, quote -unquote, compassionate to the point that we let everyone continue headlong down into the void because they're refusing not to leave their sins behind them or whatever it may be.

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There are times when we have to approach these issues and handle them. We can't leave truth behind.

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Okay, so when it's necessary, there are times when we have to approach these legitimate sin issues, but when we do, we do so not slanderously and not blaspheming.

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That's what the phrase means there, to speak evil of no man. Now after that, Paul tells us not to be brawlers, and this is really interesting stuff.

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We read these verses and we think, okay, yeah, that sounds good. I don't consider myself much of a brawler.

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The thing is, is these particular, I see you back there, dad, these particular sins are more pervasive than they seem on the surface level, and we also have to remember this, that oftentimes brawling begins, well, 100 % of the time, brawling begins in the heart long before it manifests itself in an actual fight out in the street.

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Maybe you're going to punch out your liberal congressman as he walks up the steps of the Capitol building.

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That sort of thing. Well, that begins in the heart long before you go and do that, and so yeah, we may not be brawlers physically yet, but the thing is, we have to address that inwardly long before it would ever manifest itself in a physical altercation, but with even that aside, we have to think, who's

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Paul dealing with here on the island of Crete a couple thousand years ago? Well, he's dealing with the people that had the propensity to go out there and kind of go crazy when they were upset, when they didn't like what was going on, to kind of have these little rebellious uprisings, maybe not necessarily with the civil government figures, but perhaps their law enforcement officers, so to speak, that sort of thing.

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And so Paul is saying we shouldn't be brawlers, and it literally means we're not to be fighters physically at every point of contention.

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So we get a little bit upset about something, maybe it's a legitimate issue. Again, we're assuming that the authorities at play here are actually wielding the sword, so to speak, incorrectly.

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They are actually unjustly running the government. We're assuming that. Even when that's the case, at every point of contention, we're not supposed to immediately get into the physical altercations, punching them out and showing them who's boss or something like that.

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We're not supposed to do that. And I think I addressed this a little bit last week, but we have to remember, you know, when you're looking at a teaching of an apostle like this, you have to consider the context with which they're talking, and you have to ask yourself, what are their assumptions here?

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And in this case, Paul's assumption is that we're living in a relatively peaceful society.

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It's not to say the government's not making mistakes and maybe pretty egregious ones, but it's a society where going out and being brawlers is just not the answer, period.

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And that's the context he's talking about here. It doesn't mean that he's condemning self -defense.

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It doesn't mean that he's condemning violence wholesale when it comes to defending your property, your person, your family.

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And it goes without saying, but you know, we've got to point these types of things out. Paul tells us elsewhere that we have weapons that are not carnal.

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In 2 Corinthians, our weapons are not carnal, but they come from the Almighty God Himself.

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And he didn't say that to mean that we can't physically defend ourselves. He was talking about this kind of context here in Titus.

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This kind of context. In this context, our weapons aren't carnal. They are, we're about to see in a second, meekness and gentleness, and we'll break that down more.

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Yes, sir. Do you think he's speaking to things like the Hamas supporters when they attack the police, or are people that are anti -ICE, and they attack the federal agents who are actually, you know, arresting people that broke the law?

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Whether they're criminals or not, they're lawbreakers. You're illegally, and people are attacking to throw rocks at them.

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Right. They're brawling, right? Absolutely. Even if we didn't agree with it, we should chuck rocks at them, absolutely.

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It is government's duty to go out there, law enforcement officers, they are the ones that are supposed to bring peace, sometimes through violent means, if there are mobsters out on the street going nuts, destroying property, and threatening other people.

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So you leave that to them, generally speaking, you leave that to them, and you avoid that for a lot of reasons, and think about the wisdom of God here.

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I mean, He's protecting us. He doesn't want us to be brawlers because He doesn't want us out there doing dumb stuff that will put us in harm's way.

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You know, one guy may have a righteous cause, and he wants to go out there and show everybody that I'm going to stand up for this,

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I'm going to stand up for this cause, I'm going to go out and fight. He does so, maybe he takes out some really bad dudes, legitimately bad dudes.

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But in the process, he gets arrested because, you know, maybe he's breaking the law in doing so, or something like that.

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Or he gets just caught up in all of the fray and is wrongly accused of something he didn't do because he's out there brawling, and he's put in jail.

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Well, now he's away from his family. Now he can't provide for them the way that he should. Now he can't protect them back home.

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And it opens them up to a lot of vulnerabilities as well. So when God tells us not to be brawlers, He's doing so for multiple reasons.

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He wants, number one, the government will answer for how they do or do not handle things.

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So if they allow riots in the streets, it's still their job to handle it, whether they're handling it or not, and they will be held accountable when they meet

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Jesus face to face one day for whether or not they did anything about it. It's their job to do it.

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It is our job to defend our families, to protect our families, unless, of course, we are called to be a law enforcement officer or something, or we are the mayor or we are the governor or whatever.

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But generally speaking, yeah, we are to remain out of that and, again, use our non -carnal weapons in most cases.

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And Paul, so that's 2 Corinthians 10 where Paul uses that particular phrase, but we see it being taught here in this verse as well.

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What he's doing is he is alluding to at least one form of weaponry that we do have in our

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Christian arsenal, and this is all exceptions of self -defense and things like that aside.

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We addressed it last week in the law of God. There are provisions for self -defense. It is completely righteous to, even by most extreme means, to protect yourself, your family, and your property.

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And then Jesus, of course, tells his disciples to get a sword for their own self -defense. We know that self -defense is okay.

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So we're not—this is not Paul's going soft on that particular thing.

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He's talking about something else. He's talking about our general attitudes toward societal strife against our government and things like that, and he's about to tell us a few of the weapons we have that are not carnal.

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Yes, ma 'am? I think one of the reasons is as Christians, we're here to be known by our love, and we may be 99 % of the time known by the love that we show to others, but if you take 1 % of that time to go participate in something like that, that's what you're going to be known by.

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Sure, yeah. That's how people are going to know you, because the media is going to make you feel like that.

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Yeah, absolutely. Well, it goes back to God is protecting his people here because even if you go out there just to,

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I don't know, get involved in a nonviolent way, you never know what cameras will pick up.

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You never know what kind of mosh pit you'll find yourself in, and you didn't mean to be there, and you're not even the one doing anything crazy, but the cameras pick that up, and now your testimony perhaps has been marred because it's like, well, why were you out there doing that?

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You look like a madman or something like that. So yes, again, we're being protected when we're told to beware of this kind of attitude when we get really upset about government, government authorities, government officials doing perhaps even legitimately immoral things.

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We have to fight it, but we have to fight it according to the biblical standards, the standards that God gives us, and let's take a look at one of them here.

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This isn't all -encompassing, but Paul specifically lists a few. He says, we do this, a couple of our non -carnal weapons that we have, is we do it through gentleness, showing all meekness to all men.

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Now, for those of you that have been attending our Wednesday night classes, you will notice some similarities here in the virtues that we talk about and the fruit of the

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Spirit in Galatians chapter 5. Both of these things, meekness and gentleness, are aspects of the fruit of the

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Spirit. They both flow from love, which we have talked about, the preeminent virtue, the sum of all virtues.

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And so in this case, what Paul is saying is we approach our government leaders, our fellow citizens, believers and unbelievers alike, with love for a neighbor.

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Remember, the summary of the entire law, love your neighbor as you love yourself. And that's what

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Paul sets the context with in Galatians 5 as he goes into the fruit of the Spirit. And so when we see here to have gentleness and showing all meekness to all men, we are simply fulfilling that commandment.

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We are simply loving others the way we would want them to love us. We are treating our neighbors the way we would want them to treat us.

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Because one thing we have to remember when we're out there and we're seeing, whether it's the politicians on the highest level, down to the local level, or our fellow citizens that are maybe supporting the things that we know are just plainly immoral, unbiblical, in opposition to God's Word, and they may even be supporting these issues to their own detriment later down the road.

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We see all this happening, but we have to remember that our battle, and Paul tells us this in Ephesians 6, is ultimately with the devil.

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Now, yes, there are occasions where we will have run -ins with his people. In Romans 1,

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Paul tells us that there comes a time when human beings are handed over in such a way that there's no turning back.

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They reach the point of no return because they, by their own will, have seared their consciences.

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Their conscience tells them for years, for decades, stop doing this. Don't do this. You're hurting your body.

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You're hurting other people. It's going to kill you, all these types of things, and they ignore it each and every time. And God gives them multiple chances from the human viewpoint,

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Paul spells all this out in Romans 1, to repent, to turn away from it, to turn to God, discover who

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He is, and they never do it. They refuse to because they love the pleasures and the lusts of the flesh.

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And what happens when they reach that point of no return? They become implacable. They are given over to a reprobate mind.

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And so there are times when we will have run -ins with those people, and they are our enemies, absolutely.

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But generally speaking, our battle is ultimately with the devil. And what that means is that the lost world, and that includes our authorities, our politicians, those we disagree with, they're contested territory.

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They're not necessarily the enemy. We are fighting for souls here. We have a chance to be the instruments that God uses to bring light into the darkest places you can imagine.

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And as I heard it once said, these people are contested territory. They're not necessarily the enemy.

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They may be right in the middle between the spiritual war of the devil trying to cling to their souls to the point of no return, which happens sometimes, or us in the spiritual battle wielding the armor of God, wielding the non -carnal arsenal that we've been given, fighting for these souls from the human viewpoint.

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It's contested territory. We could win them over through our gentle and meek spirits if we are obedient to these commands from Paul here.

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Now as we'll study more when we get to 2 Timothy, this type of behavior, being gentle, showing meekness to all men, it is potentially, and that's an important word to emphasize here because it's all in God's hands and we know that.

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But when we are obedient to these things and we have this type of behavior, it is potentially transforming in the lives of our fellow citizens and maybe even our leaders that are lost.

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And I'll show you what I mean by that if you'll turn to 2 Timothy 2 with me.

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Like I said a second ago, we'll study this in more detail when we get to 2 Timothy, whenever that'll be.

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But I want to go ahead and take a look at it with you. And we're all familiar with this passage. I think I've referenced it probably two or three times in this study.

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Dad references it often. It's very important for us to keep in mind. And it is a parallel passage with Titus 3, verses 1 and 2.

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And you'll see why in just a second. Take a look at it with me. 2 Timothy 2.

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Let's start in verse 24. And it says, And the servant of the

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Lord must not strive, but be gentle. There's the gentleness. There's the fruit of the

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Spirit. Must be gentle unto all men. Very similar phrase to what we just read in Titus 2.

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Apt to teach, patient. That's another fruit of the Spirit, by the way. In meekness, there's another one.

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Instructing those that oppose themselves, if God, by chance or paradventure, will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth, and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him and his will.

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Again, we're talking about contested territory here. It's like having the chance to claim new ground that wasn't previously ours.

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It's ultimately still in God's hands. And that's why Paul uses the term paradventure here. We have to remember that.

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But we don't get to sit back, fatalistically, in our armchairs and say, Well, God is sovereign.

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He'll save them if He wants to. Remember, God ordains the means just as much as He ordains the ends.

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And guess what the means are for saving people? His people. He uses them to go out, proclaim the gospel, to share the word.

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He gives the truth in contrast with the lies that they have been deceived by.

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We're going to look at deception here in just a second. He uses us to go out there and give the contrast for all of that so that, again, they can see the light.

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We are the light. We are the salt. It's our job. It's our duty. We go out there and we do these things, and there is a chance, potentially, that it has a transforming reality to these people.

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But, again, just look at some of the things. What are the non -carnal weapons that bring this type of victory about where we, in God's name, potentially save eternal souls?

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What are the weapons that we use here? The servant of the Lord must not strive, kind of parallel with being a brawler, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach.

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So we've got to be good at teaching and proclaiming the truth. We can't just kind of go out there and say, well, maybe when the time comes we'll be able to articulate it just right.

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The Holy Spirit expects us to study His Word. Yes, He moves us. There are times in very dire straits where He may even speak through us in a way.

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Yes, but generally speaking, the normative way that the Holy Spirit works in our lives throughout all of church history is by us studying

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His Word that He then brings to remembrance in our minds. That's how it works.

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He wrote it. He's the author of it. But of course He wants us to be in His book. So we are to be gentle to all men, apt to teach, patient in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves.

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Those are our non -carnal weapons that we use in this particular battle. It's really, really amazing stuff.

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So, y 'all have any thoughts on that really quick before we move to verse 3? All right, take a look at verse 3 with me.

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Back in Titus chapter 3. Now, what

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Paul is about to do is something pretty spectacular. Let's read the verse first. He says, Now, this is the kind of verse that really can slap someone across the face when they need to be shaken up a little bit, when they need to be reminded perhaps they're getting a little haughty, perhaps they're a little prideful.

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And I'm talking about believers here. Perhaps they get to a point where they feel like they are the sole person in the right in their circle, in their area, whatever.

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You can come up with a lot of hypotheticals here. This is the kind of verse that really humbles a Christian. Now, Paul is doing something here that's very similar to what he did at the end of chapter 2.

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If you guys remember, Titus chapter 2, you have 10 verses of the most practical

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Christian living instruction that you can imagine. I mean, just he's talking to the old men, the old women, young men, young women telling them exactly how to behave.

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And at the end of the chapter, what does he do? He zooms way out and he reminds them what the basis is for this character, why he's telling them what he's telling them.

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Why is he telling young women to be keepers at home? Is Paul just a misogynist? No. He's being moved by the

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Holy Spirit to tell them exactly where they can find the most peace and fulfillment and gratification in their life because they are fulfilling something that they were created to do, which is something that men cannot do.

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And that is beautify a home, raise children, have children, nurse them, comfort them, nurture them, do all of these things that give sustenance to their husband, yes, but also the future of the following generations.

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It's like we said, you don't get King David without Ruth. And that was multiple generations before he was born.

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And so Paul gives all this practical instruction, and then he wraps up the chapter by saying, you do this.

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Why? Because the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness, worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world.

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And then he goes on to give a proof of the deity of Christ. He goes on to tell us about our future hope when Jesus comes back, and the fullness of redemption is here.

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That is the basis for all of the practical Christian living that he gave in the previous ten verses. What does that have to do with chapter three?

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Well, he's doing the exact same thing again. He's giving us the basis in verse three.

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He's giving us the basis for our behavior as Christians. He is telling us, you are going to act this way, and this is why you're going to act this way.

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He actually gives us the reason for it. As I've said so many times, Paul isn't telling us to obey the authorities and be gentle and meek to all men because he's just trying to come up with some arbitrary standards for us to follow.

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He's not just making this stuff up on the fly. What he's doing is that he is telling us, he's showing us the foundation for having these attitudes.

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And what is that foundation? The foundation is that God was merciful toward us because we were no better than anybody else, and therefore we should live in such a way that shows mercy to others.

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We should live in a way that gives the benefit of the doubt in such a way that our meekness and our gentleness is kind of the drive train behind our teaching and maybe even our admonishing and rebuke.

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Our gentleness and meekness is at the forefront. Why is that? Because that in and of itself is a merciful act rather than just a barrage of yelling or maybe even physically fighting a person that is living in an improper way.

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God was merciful to us because we were just like they are, therefore we should live this way.

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Paul is instructing Titus to teach a behavior based upon God's mercy.

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It doesn't matter how wrong someone has done us personally, it's not as bad as the wrong that we ourselves did toward God and what ultimately put him on the cross.

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So in his typical teaching style, Paul gives us some lists. Paul loves lists.

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All throughout the epistles you see them everywhere. Lists of virtues, lists of sins, lists of commands, lists of things to avoid, and here we have them yet again.

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And between verses 1 and 2, and look at kind of the harmony or the symmetry here, in verses 1 and 2 he gives a list of seven virtues, in other words seven positive behavior traits, seven positive ways of living, positive patterns of good works, and then in verse 3 he gives a list of seven sins that summarize our previous condition.

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So seven in the positive, seven in the negative. And as you can imagine, it could be a little bit easier for us to not become haughty and prideful toward our civil leaders even when they fail, or any of our fellow citizens even when they are failing left and right, when we put in remembrance the condition that we were in prior to salvation.

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And that's what Paul is putting at the forefront here. He's saying we were just like they are.

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We were that too. And so you can't go and say, well, if only you were as good as I was or as good as I am,

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I'm going to really give you a lesson because I have the moral high ground here. And by the way, we do.

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But having the moral high ground legitimately yields the fruit of the spirit. People that think they have the moral high ground perhaps in some kind of moralistic fashion where it's all about the external and not about the heart, they are the ones that ultimately will crash and burn, and they don't actually have the moral high ground.

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They're in actually a very vulnerable state. But when you have the legitimate moral high ground, because it's based upon God's objective word and not our own standards, it yields the fruit of the spirit, which is gentleness and meekness and not pride at all.

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There's no pride whatsoever. It's really amazing the way that all of this works.

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Let's take a look at some of these terms. Look at verse 3 a little bit closer. He says, for we ourselves also were sometimes foolish.

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Let's start there. The Greek term literally means to be unintelligible or to be unwise.

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We simply did not know what we were doing before we were saved. We had no clue how to live in a harmonious way or a way that actually made any sense.

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Maybe we were borrowing the morals of Christianity because it just makes sense. But we were borrowing the morals without recognizing the lawgiver, the one that gave the moral standards, the

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Savior himself. So you live in such a way that's unintelligible, a way that is unwise.

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We didn't know what we were doing. The New Testament talks about the darkened mind of unregenerate humans, and that's how we once were.

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We had darkened minds. We couldn't see the light. We couldn't recognize it. We couldn't make sense out of the way the universe actually works.

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We may have an understanding of some of the facts because they're right before us, but we didn't understand that those facts had meaning and purpose because there was a creator behind them, a true, legitimate creator.

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It wasn't arbitrary. It wasn't neutral. It came from the one from which all things consist.

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We didn't understand that. We had darkened minds. And we were producing unintelligible lifestyles because of it.

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What's the next thing we were? We were foolish, but we were also disobedient. The Greek term here, it means to be disobedient, but it means to be disobedient in a way that you are impersuadable.

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So we were disobedient. We weren't going to obey any of God's commands.

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We weren't going to obey anything that he tells us to do, but we couldn't even be persuaded to obey if someone were talking to us and saying, look, you really need to obey these things.

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Nothing they could do would actually persuade us, even if our lives, even if our souls depended on it.

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We were impersuadable is what the Greek term means. We have a propensity toward rebellion, and that rebellion puts us in a situation where we don't even want to be persuaded, to be obedient to the one in whose image we were created.

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We rebel against God. We rebel against the authorities, the government, put over us if we can.

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We rebel against our parents in spite of the fifth commandment. And frankly, this is why in his wisdom

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Solomon instructed parents to spank their kids. It's almost especially in hindsight.

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When you get older kids that are like way past that stage, like Tyler over there or myself, I still remember the last spanking

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I got when I was 12. Well, he's – yeah, Matt and I are having to keep a sharp eye out.

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But when you look – like when you think about being an adult and remembering the last spanking you got, there is almost some humor in it.

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And you can have good laughs with your parents. Like remember that time you had to give me a whooping because like –

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I was about to use an example, but I won't. Well, I was going to use one of your examples because I can't remember my own for some reason.

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The time in the car. Yes, sir, in the car. Matt was really little, and he just – like dad told him not to do something.

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And it's like he immediately did it because he just was going so fast. And so it was just a nightmare.

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So now we can have – like we can laugh about these things now as adults with the dad that gave us the swipe.

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There's humor in it later. And so you can think like why is this so important? Why did

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Solomon kind of harp on this in multiple places? The reason was he understood what rebellion looked like.

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He himself was a rebel, and he remembered what that felt like, and he knew that he had it within him from the earliest age.

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So he gave us instruction on how to help curb that rebellion because it is built into us because of the sin in which we inherited from Adam and Eve.

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It's in us. It's in our nature. And so he gives us instruction on how to curb that rebellion so that it's not totally out of control by the time they're adults.

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And then, of course, the spirit does the rest. And so he tells us that, again, we were disobedient.

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We were impersuadable. We were rebels. We were rebels. We had a rebellious spirit. We couldn't even be persuaded to follow

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God's word no matter how good the arguments were. What's the next thing he says we were? He says we were deceived.

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And the Greek term here is amazing. It's pleneo, which is where we get the word planet from.

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The Greek word for deceived or to be deceived or to be led astray is the word we get our

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English word planet from. And the ancients, what they would do is they would look up in the night sky and they would see these great celestial bodies moving around with these irregular patterns.

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And they knew that there was some harmony to it. There was some symmetry to it. But they're looking at it with the backdrop of these fixed constellations that never moved.

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And these planets are just moving around. And sometimes they go retrograde maybe, and it just didn't make any sense to them.

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Of course, they didn't understand the forces of gravity yet. And so what did they do?

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They used the Greek term pleneo. That's the root kind of etymology for the terms they would use for planets and these celestial bodies that they are observing wandering around in space is how they put it.

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The word means to wander or to be led astray. And so that's the term that Paul uses here.

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We were pleneo. We were deceived like a planet wandering around out in the void in contrast with the fixed standards, the fixed stars.

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Again, they derived the name for these planets, the celestial bodies, from the same word, to wander or to be led astray.

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And in 2 Timothy 3 .13, you don't have to go there, it says,

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But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.

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So they are leading astray and they are being led astray simultaneously. That is the condition we were in prior to salvation.

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We were like a wandering planet with being led astray, being pulled around in the void.

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Paul then gives us an idea of what the motivating factor is for all of this. Remember, we are born in a state of rebellion, in a state of wrath.

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Paul tells us this in Ephesians 2 .3. And to what end are we rebelling?

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What is the end goal in the minds of the unregenerate unbelievers, just like we were before we were saved?

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What was our end goal? What are the reasons why we are being deceived? What are the reasons why we are being foolish, we are being disobedient, we are being impersuadable?

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Why were we so stubborn in our sin? What was the end goal? Well, again, back in Titus 3 .3,

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he says it was to serve diverse lusts and pleasures. And another way you could translate this is by saying that we were enslaved to various lusts and pleasures.

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The Greek term doulao, just like doulos, to be a slave.

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To be doulao means to be enslaved by something. And so the KJV says to serve diverse lusts and pleasures.

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You could also say we were enslaved to these diverse lusts and pleasures. And when you look at that reality prior to our salvation, and you look at the unregenerate world, and you see that they are in the state that we once were, we realize that men are never actually free in the libertarian sense.

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We know that there is a true liberty, Paul talks about it. We know there is a true freedom, Jesus talks about it. Peter says as free men, we are able to live the

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Christian life. So we understand there is a biblical freedom. I'm talking about in the libertarian sense of freedom, where it's the autonomous man getting to be the captain of his own ship, being at the steering wheel of his own ship and deciding where he goes, what he does, he's in control of everything.

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That is never a reality. We are never free in that sense prior to salvation or after salvation.

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It just depends on which master we are serving. Are we enslaved to our diverse lusts and pleasures?

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Are we enslaved to God himself? This is why all of the apostles called themselves slaves of Christ.

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Doulas and Brother Otis always pointed out that term every time it popped up. It's such a strong term, bond slave.

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We are following him as the perfect master. So we're never free in the libertarian sense.

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It just depends on which master we're serving. It'll be Jesus or it'll be any number of lesser lords, including our own lusts and pleasures.

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So that is ultimately the chief end of living in this way in the unregenerate state.

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Why we're disobedient and persuadable, all of these things, why we're wandering around. It is because we are serving or enslaved to these things.

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And then right after that, he says that we were living in malice and in envy.

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Now, malice is literally what it literally means to exhibit a malicious wickedness.

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So we're talking about it as bad as a human can get in the heart, a malicious wickedness.

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We were living in malice. And then he says that was in tandem with envy or just having ill will toward neighbor, toward the people around us.

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But the key word here to note isn't necessarily malice or envy.

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But the important word to note is living. You see that? Living in malice and envy.

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What this points out is that these weren't just some blips on the radar. Every now and then we messed up.

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Every now and then we got a little envious. Every now and then we were a little bit malicious. Oops, and then we move on.

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That's not at all the state we were in. This is the continual lifestyle.

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This is an active participle. This is we are living in it continually. This is us.

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This is who we are. We are by nature malicious and envious. Not blips on the radar, but a lifestyle.

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Now, we might look at this even as Christians and we think, well, looking back before I was saved,

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I really don't think I was that bad. I don't feel like I was ever maliciously wicked.

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But one thing we have to remember is the only reason we ever would have a thought like that, the only reason we would ever have a thought of,

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I don't think I was ever that bad, when Paul is clearly giving us contrast, saying this is how we once were.

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The only reason we ever kind of get to the point where we think, well, that wasn't really me. I mean, I know I was saved.

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I know I needed a Savior. But I wasn't as bad as insert someone's name. The only reason we ever do that is because we are using the devil as the standard of righteousness rather than God.

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Because when you insert the devil in that place or one of his emissaries,

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Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, anyone you want to put in their pole pot.

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Dad mentioned him yesterday. If you make them the standard, then of course you're a good person. It's easy.

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It's easy to be a good person because you're not, you know, enacting genocide on whole groups of people or something like that.

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But they're not the standard, and the devil certainly is. God is the standard for righteousness.

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And when we hold ourselves up to him, up to the holiness that Isaiah saw in Isaiah chapter 6, when the cherubim are singing holy, holy, holy, and that is repeated later in Revelation as well, with Jesus at the forefront of the worship.

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When we think about that, then we can understand what Paul was saying here. We were maliciously wicked before our salvation.

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We still have the capacity for it now because of our old man, but it's not who we are. We have the power to overcome it now because it's the power of the

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Holy Spirit. But before we were saved, it's who we were intrinsically. We were maliciously wicked and envious.

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That's who we were. And then just to finish this out, verse 3, we get to the chief end of the unregenerate soul.

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After living continually on the search for fulfilling every selfish desire and indulgence that you could possibly think of, after getting to that point as an unregenerate person, we hate anything and anyone that could stand in the way of us achieving our pleasure.

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That's the ultimate end to those that don't repent, turn away from their sin toward God.

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Remember in Titus chapter 2, he says to move toward righteousness. It means literally to move

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Godward. People that don't do that and they continue down the dark path of being impersuadable, being disobedient, being deceived, being like a wandering planet, being foolish, searching out only our own pleasures and our lusts.

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The logical conclusion to that, to put it in Paul's words, being hateful and hating one another.

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Being a hateful person and hating everyone around you, anyone that could possibly get in the way of the pleasures that you want to indulge in.

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Now, this is a pretty heavy note because again, Paul is talking to Christians in this verse.

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He is saying, this is who you were and why is he doing it? Remember, he's reminding us that the basis for our obedience to verses 1 and 2 is

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God's mercy. If God could be merciful to a person like the person in verse 3, which was every person in this room, every

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Christian that's ever lived. If God could be merciful to a person like that, then we can be gentle and kind to all men.

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You see the argument? You see the basis for all of it? It's really quite amazing.

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So we'll end there, but next week when we get into verse 4, and honestly all the way through verses 7, verse 9 actually, as we keep moving on, we will see this argument, kind of Paul building on this argument more and more.

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In other words, the basis for the godly living in verses 1 and 2 are built upon God's mercy, and he fleshes that out.

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What does God's mercy look like? And he actually gives us some of the deepest theology that we have in the New Testament, right here in this little epistle of Titus, the very doctrine of regeneration.

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We're about to get to that. But before I end today, I want to end on one quick thing, one quick note, because Paul is talking about the lusts and the pleasures and things like that.

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It's important for us as Christians to always remember that we never want to take passages in isolation.

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We need to learn from the principles that the apostle or Jesus himself or the prophet, whomever it is, we need to take the principles that they're teaching us in the context they're giving it to us in, we need to take that, apply it to our lives, live it out.

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But any time we take even a truth, even a biblical truth in isolation, because we're fallible humans, we can go too far.

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And so you look at a verse like this and say, well, I never want to live like that again. I never want to live in such a way that I am serving diverse lusts and pleasures.

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And by the way, the word pleasure there, it's the Greek term hedonia, or however you pronounce it.

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It's where we get hedonism from. You can look at something like that and say, I need to avoid that. And many of our brothers and sisters out there, in their pursuit of avoiding that lifestyle or even the appearance of that lifestyle, avoid the

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God -given pleasures that we are supposed to enjoy. And so it's just a final thought.

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Paul is condemning being enslaved by pleasure. But what he's not doing is saying that pleasure in and of itself is bad.

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What he's condemning is being enslaved by pleasure. God has no problem with his people.

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In fact, he takes great joy in his people experiencing pleasure. What he hates is when we allow the pleasure to enslave us, and that is when all becomes vanity.

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That's the entire thrust of the book of Ecclesiastes. Everything is vanity unless you recognize the person from which it flows, which is

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God himself. When you recognize that, when you fear God and keep his commandments, which is the final verse of the entire book, 12 chapters, when you do that, all of the pleasures become magnificent.

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All of the sudden, feasting is a wonderful God -given gift.

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The marriage bed is undefiled. You can lean into all of these various pleasures that God himself gave to enjoy, but with him at the forefront.

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It's all tethered to him. So I just wanted to end with that. Paul is not condemning pleasure. What he's condemning is the enslavement to it.

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The moment we decide that the pleasure that we're seeking is the ultimate goal, is the thing that we care about more than anything else,

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I don't care what anyone else thinks about it, and we may even functionally say, I don't even care what

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God thinks about it, that's the area we don't want to go anymore. That's how we were before we were saved, and we never want to revisit that place again.

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That was the main argument there. So do you all have any thoughts or anything before we close out? Well, I always think about the difference between when you're with colleagues and friends and whatever.

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Just understanding Christian, I guess not colleagues, but acquaintances.

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A Christian who occasionally is acting in this manner, because it says sometimes, even you, sometimes act in this way, versus a goat, if you will, who sometimes acts nice.

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And it's like, I'm going to be good. It's a new me. New me this year. And I'm going to work on being a loving, understanding person.

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And sometimes they look better than a Christian for a period. Understanding those differences.

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Right. And we talked about this. You may not have been there because you were probably already on paternity leave, but in our

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Wednesday night Bible study, we talked about this very thing. What is the dividing line between a goat and a sheep when they both are living pretty morally, pretty moral lives?

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The dividing line is what is the person going to do the moment being moral is no longer an advantage, a cultural or societal advantage.

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The moment that the magistrate comes and says, okay, now you're not allowed to live in this manner anymore.

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And if you do, you'll be thrown to the lions. The undergenerate will say, I'm done. Tell me who to bow down and whose ring

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I need to kiss. But the Christian says, no, I can't not do that. I can't not live in this manner.

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And then they're thrown to the lions. And so everyone can live morally until time gets tough.

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And the standards of God are put to the test and the believers are put to the test. Remember, Jesus gives us tests of who are his true disciples and who aren't.

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The beginning of John chapter 6, everyone's his disciple. At the end of it, he has hardly anyone left. There are true and false disciples.

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Let me go ask real quick, Dad, because she had raised her hand a minute ago and I missed it. It's funny because what

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I was thinking going through this, and I know that there is a time and a place like when Jesus rebuked the

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Pharisees, there was no, he was not gentle. It was forceful and angry and, you know, it was called for and needed.

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But what I was thinking of, this actually helps in instances where we're thinking a little to us and them.

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Because part of the argument is you were like this until me.

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And so you can't say, you can't write anyone off as like emphatically, this is a goat that can't be helped.

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I don't owe them gentleness and meekness. Christ didn't owe us gentleness and meekness. Like Christ didn't owe us anything.

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And so He gives us the power, but also part of the argument is just like, don't forget, like your state, and I'm telling you what it was, whether you think it was that bad or not, like you were saying, it depends on what the standard is, but that was you.

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And so it takes, it's kind of, it takes faith that, and you need to be reminded what

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Christ saved you from before you go and say, well this person is clearly this, and therefore we need to just kind of brush them off and treat them without that gentleness because they just don't deserve it.

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Yes, and I will say this too, context is everything, and by context I mean us living in the moment.

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So we may see a riot of people going nuts or some kind of crazy

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LGBTQ whatever parade, and it may not be the time and the place to go into that and be gentle and meek.

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You might want to avoid all of that. But what happens when maybe an individual from that parade walks out of it, and you're then presented with an opportunity to have a discussion with them, and that's where street evangelism is such a potent weapon for God's people.

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As the Holy Spirit leads, how does that conversation look? Is there gentleness and meekness there, or is there fire and brimstone in the inappropriate sense?

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There's a biblical fire and brimstone preaching. There are contexts for that.

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It's usually where there's a crowd, and it's a crowd that is just indulged in idolatry or something like that.

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And then there is a false, pietistic, or moralistic fire and brimstone where I'm better than you, therefore you're going to hell, even in the one -on -one conversations.

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So context is everything. You don't want to just run into the parade and start trying to be meek and gentle to everybody around you.

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You will get walloped. But as those people disperse, and they leave that kind of high -adrenaline environment where everything that's not affirming is evil, that sort of thing, as soon as they get out of that, you may have an opportunity to use your gentleness and meekness as a spiritual weapon to turn them back.

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Yeah, a co -worker, right. It could be a co -worker. It could be a family member. Exactly.

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Right. That's right.

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Dad, did you have a thought back there? Oh, okay. That is probably fair, because we are about five minutes over now.

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And the time really flies. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this day and for bringing us all together once again, for giving us opportunities to open up the

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Scripture and to talk about it and to see the things that you have for us, the instruction that you laid down millennia ago, and yet is still so applicable to our times and our places right now that it is just beyond astonishing that you did it this way, that you were able to pull this off.

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We know that you are all -powerful, and yet in our feebleness and in our fallibility, we are in a constant awestruck state of your majesty and your power and the way that you communicate to us and allow us to have a standard to base our lives upon so that it's not chaos, so that we can have orderliness, so that we can have peace and genuine love and all of these things.

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We thank you for it. We ask that you please bless the rest of our time together today, the rest of our services. We ask all these things in your name.